pano (Mdz43r)

Glyph or Iconographic Image Description: 

This element for the verb "to cross over" (shown with a footprint) has been carved from the compound sign for the place name, Texopan. This is a single black footprint, from a left foot, horizontal, and heading to our right.

Description, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Added Analysis: 

This is the same type of print that is shown on maps to indicate roads, trails, or pathways, given that it indicates human movement across a landscape. In the compound from which this footprint derives, however, it provides the phonetic value for the locative suffix -pan (meaning on or in). When the footprint appears above another glyphic element, it represents the verb pano (shortened to -pan, on), as it does here. In other glyphs, where it appears below another glyphic element, it is referring to a road (otli), and provides the phonetic "yo" (referring to a place characteristic of that other thing, full of it, having a lot of it). [See Gordon Whittaker's discussion of this in Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs, 2021, 100.]

Footprint glyphs have a wide range of translations. In this collection, so far, we can attest to yauh, xo, pano, -pan, paina, temo, nemi, quetza, otli, iyaquic hualiloti, huallauh, tepal, tetepotztoca, totoco, otlatoca, -tihui, and the vowel "o." Other research (Herrera et al, 2005, 64) points to additional terms, including: choloa, tlaloa, totoyoa, eco, aci, quiza, maxalihui, centlacxitl, and xocpalli.

Added Analysis, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Source Manuscript: 
Date of Manuscript: 

c. 1541, but by 1553 at the latest

Creator's Location (and place coverage): 

Mexico City

Syntax: 
Cultural Content, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Colors: 
Shapes and Perspectives: 
Keywords: 

foot, feet, travel, crossing over, traveling, footprints

Glyph or Iconographic Image: 
Relevant Nahuatl Dictionary Word(s): 
Additional Scholars' Interpretations: 

on

Spanish Translation, Credit: 

Stephanie Wood

Image Source: 

Codex Mendoza, folio 43 recto, https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/2fea788e-2aa2-4f08-b6d9-648c00..., image 96 of 188.

Image Source, Rights: 

The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, hold the original manuscript, the MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1. This image is published here under the UK Creative Commons, “Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License” (CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).

See Also: